Beltane (or Beltaine) is celebrated on the first day of May and is a traditional Celtic festival that falls halfway between Ostara (Spring Equinox) and Litha (Summer Solstice). Considered one of the holiest days within the Celtic Wheel of the Year, Beltane is the mid-point festival that honors the move towards the light. It is a time of increase and potency; days are lengthening, flora and fauna are rapidly regenerating. This is a festival that celebrates the fire of LIFE!

Beltane is actually Old Irish for “Bright Fire,” and it was celebrated with bonfires and various rituals that would involve farmers moving their cattle through the Beltane fire smoke for disease prevention. In some European regions, people conintue the age-old tradition of gathering outside to decorate and dance around a maypole, a symbol of virility, potency, and the fiery veriditas of life.

During the Blessed Beltane mini-retreat, we will learn about these ancient rituals and reconnect to ways that we can still celebrate the essential and sacred nature of this season. We will look to the plants of the season as wisdom bearers, and remember the old ways of how fire and plants would work together to burn away what no longer serves, and bless that what is to come.

We will create a temenos circle, a sacred clearing where our hearts are open for reconnection and remembrance, a place where we invite the potency of plants to companion us as we weave our own mini-May Pole, our Beltane Blessing Bundle that will be prayerfully burned in the seasons to come.

This virtual, live mini-retreat will include:

• Officiated ritual and blessings;

• An overview and teaching on the significance of the Celtic Wheel of the Year, and Beltane (Beltaine);

• Basic plant teachings for growing social-emotional skills;

• Entheogenic instruction—how to work with a plant’s “God-within-ness”;

• Guided personal reflection time;

• Live instruction for making your own Beltane Blessing Bundle and the historical place of burning herbs as a tool for sacred clearing and prayer;

• Facilitated space to hear from and connect with one another;

• Support to create your own personal ceremony to deepen into the sacramentality of this festival day.

Our time together will be a potent set-apart time, a time dedicated to the seasonal energies that are moving within and throughout us, in our own inner-nature, as well as throughout the wild world.

Blessed Beltane is a time for you to reflect on the summer energies within you, and to meaningfully engage with the plant community as aids and guides to support you as you cross the various thresholds of your own life.